


Try To Be A Good Mother

by kiiouex



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: A few guesses about character's feelings and history, Gen, Introspection, POV Second Person, Speculative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose left them with a child and memories of her love.</p>
<p>Basically 100% introspection, each of the gems considering if they are providing what Steven needs and their relationship with him and Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably a mix of a lot of different headcanon posts mixed together and laid out in my favorite second person voice :V Thanks a bunch to lovely beta [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) whose nitpicking saves me from minuscule yet mortifying errors.

It’s hard to love while you’re still grieving. You know that from the human perspective Rose has been gone a long time. Years count differently to them. Greg still misses her, but he only _had_ her for a decade. You had her for an eternity. And you’re trying, really, you’re trying as hard as you can to hold it together because there’s still so much to do, but you’re so glad human infants lose their memories, you’re so glad Steven never remembers when you were at your worst.

You’re coping for him, mostly. If it was just you, Amethyst and Garnet, you don’t know what shape any of you would be in. That was the point, you suppose, even when Rose leaves she grants you reason and comfort and something to love. It is so hard to love, to keep your chin up, to smile and be strong when you just want to fold in on yourself and weep. You’re coping for him, because that’s what she wanted.

You know he’s not Rose, and you know it’s shameful that the others need to keep reminding you that, and you know it’s _mortifying_ that sometimes you need them to. But how can you help it when part of him is so absolutely _her_ , when it’s her gem and her powers? You just about died when he pulled out her shield, he looked so small under it and you had to swallow down every part of you that screamed that he’s not her, he has no right to use it.

He is her, and he isn’t, and it wrecks you trying to resolve the two. You have to protect him – and not just her gem, not even when you wonder what might happen, even when you have to try very hard not to let yourself wonder – and time trips you up because he’s been alive for a blink of an eye and his capabilities constantly escape you. Garnet seems to have a better handle on what he’s able to do, Amethyst knows how to talk to him, how to ‘relate’ to him, and you…

You try to do what Rose wanted, which is to love him and look after him and make sure he has a good human experience. You doubt that any human could have a good experience on their short, dawdling trip towards death. You want to think about what happens after, when he ages, but you don’t let yourself. You know Rose wants to celebrate life. You try to focus on that.

You try not to let him see how weak he makes you, how resentment occasionally, unstoppably flares when you think which of them you’d rather have. You bite back your hate that he uses her shield, that he stole her powers, her life. And then on missions, he starts using the shield to _protect_ you, you and the others, lessen impacts and ward off dangers and he’s protecting you. He saved you all, when Peridot’s ship crashed. He protected all of you.

It is getting easier to love him, now that he’s more than her gem on a needy whining infant. It’s getting easier to love him now that his differences are really emerging, and now that he can talk to you. It’s easier to love him when he looks at you and smiles and you know he loves you, that you’re one of his three ‘mothers’, that he may never know Rose but he has all her powers including her capacity for love and his short arms can’t hug you like her huge ones, the warmth is different, but it’s still all nice.

There is a lot of pain ahead. You doubted it when he was born, but now you know that the choice between him and Rose isn’t an easy one, isn’t one you want to make. You hide your tears, and you cry in private, and you fight to protect Rose’s gem and Steven’s body because they both love you, the parts that they share and the parts that they don’t. You are grateful to everyone who coped when you couldn’t, for the care Greg and Garnet and Amethyst all managed to provide.

It is hard, but you are trying, and you’re getting closer to success. You have an eternity of memories with Rose, and you will try to do what she wants, try to make her hopes come true. For her, and for Steven. 


	2. Amethyst

You think you might know, more than the others, what a mother’s love is meant to be. It’s everything Rose gave you, when she found you, it’s warmth and acceptance and unconditional love. It’s not being blamed for things that you don’t understand, it’s having people and a place to call home. Pearl, Ruby and Sapphire are from the home world and you don’t know what things are like there but you know they’re cold, you heard enough stories, you know it’s _weird_ for all of you to hang out like you’re ‘family’.

It’s nice, though. None of the others sound bitter about their upbringings, however they were, but you’re glad you had better. You had Rose, to coax you into the world and teach you and love you and promise that you were worthwhile. And Steven’s going to get whatever weak version of that you and Pearl and Garnet can give.

You know it’s not going to be as good. You had Rose’s perfect, encompassing affection, and Steven is Rose, took Rose, can never hear her words for himself. Pearl is grieving, Garnet is stoic, and you’re trying to teach yourself not to hate Steven almost as fiercely as Pearl does. Pearl is not the only one who lost something with Rose, no matter how much she might act like she’s the only one who cares. You’re just better than her at ignoring your feelings.

Once, you thought about how _wanted_ he was, and it pissed you off until you made yourself stop thinking about it because it’s not his fault, not Rose’s, not anyone’s. He’s just lucky. He’s practically spoiled, and it makes you want to tease him and chase him and it’s not _bullying_ , not like they accused you of once, it’s just trying to keep him from getting too full of himself. It seems like all the love in the universe is heaped around him, so many lives centred on _him_ , and whenever that gets too much for you to handle you chase him around the temple and try to burn it all out of yourself.

Sometimes you wonder if he understands how lucky he is. He knows in words, because people won’t stop telling him, and he’d have to be stupid if he didn’t get that Rose was perfect and Rose chose him over herself. But you want to know if he _understands_ how wanted he was, that everyone else’s life was wrecked for him. Pearl tries to keep her feelings locked up and Garnet forbade you from telling him that he’s a loss, and you know better than to defy her over something like that.

It’s not even like you really begrudge him his existence. You just maybe want him to know, a little bit, that the birth and decisions that were so far out of his control, might be considered terrible, destructive, not worth it. Then you could have that in common with him; other people’s selfishness forever casting a pall over the two of you.

You don’t talk to him about that. You don’t spoil things, not even when your loneliness feels like an oozing wound poisoning everything else in you, not even when he’s so _happy_ and you aren’t and you want to ruin things just enough to bring him down. Even without the others telling you to, you do want to _try_ for him because he’s not going to be oblivious forever.

You had one mother’s love, and he’s going to get three attempts from three mourners and maybe between you all you can add up to Rose. Even though you can’t possibly add up to Rose. Even though it’s his fault you don’t have her anymore. You’re going to _try_. 


	3. Garnet

You have never been without love. Ruby and Sapphire have, and you can remember it like a distant echo, an ache from very far away. But your whole existence is love, has always been, and you have never known the same desperate need for affection that Amethyst and Pearl both feel, you never had to latch on to Rose the way they did. You don’t know if that makes you better or worse for Steven, but it means you can provide something the other two can’t. You can be steady. You can be strong. You do not have that wild, urgent craving for affection in you, and you miss Rose but you can find strength in yourself.

You think that it’s the best you can do for Steven, to be stable. So that when Pearl cracks – and she does, and she will continue to, she lost more than any of you when Rose made her choice – or when Amethyst is too wild, you can be the calm in the storm. You will not let your emotions get away from you, and you can be what Steven needs. Reliable. Secure.

You wish he hadn’t seen the cluster. You wish he hadn’t seen you react to the cluster. You wish he hadn’t seen you torn apart by the destabiliser because it _ruined_ you and you can’t imagine how it didn’t hurt him to see it, to know that the reputation you’ve built up for being sturdy and unshakeable is just that, a reputation, and that you are as fallible as anyone else.

From what you know of human culture – from the very, very small fragments you have taken note of – you know children idolise parents, look up to them, want to take after them. You see it in the way Steven can idolise Greg even though by human standards of success there is little about Greg to be proud of, and you don’t mean that to be cruel like Pearl might, you just don’t see what Steven does. But sometimes when Steven looks at you, you get that sense of _admiration_ that’s more than respect for power, that he’s heaped you with love and idolatry and it makes you warm on the inside. It’s not something you’ve ever felt for a gem older than you, beyond respect for pure strength and the combined power fusion brings, that kind of childish admiration, but when Steven stares at you with stars in his eyes it makes you feel a unique kind of good. Like you might be the hero he keeps making you out to be. 

You’ve felt the reverse, too, you’ve been protective of Steven since his birth but you never expected to feel _maternal_. You understood that he wasn’t Rose, and that you needed to protect the gem, and that you needed to protect _him_ because he was what Rose gave it all up for. You’ve loved him, as a small warm being, as someone you’re fond of. But when you saw him fused, him and his friend together in that tall, confident human body, you _loved him_ with a pride and ferocity because you’d been saying he was one of the crystal gems, and you had sort of believed it, but seeing him fused proved it beyond words, filled you up with love and delight. If he’d never become capable of fusion, doubt might have lingered in the back of your mind, but you never have to face that now. He is Rose’s child, and he is yours, and you are _proud_ of that.

You don’t think other gems have a parallel for that kind of relationship. You wish he hadn’t seen the cluster, seen you weak, seen something so good go so wrong. You hope he fuses again, finds the joy in himself and others. You hope he grows up with all the love he will ever need.


End file.
